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Tuesday, May 7, 2013

According to ETrade Supply source a budget iPhone will be launched this year. ETrade is a cell-phone parts supplier whose Apple rumours were correct a number of times.

Some reports suggest that the budget iPhone will be made mostly from plastic which will make it cheaper to manufacture.

The rumoured iPhone may be a mid-range phone in terms of specs and quality.

Since Steve Jobs died, there doesn’t seem to be much life at Apple. Rumous of iTV have been around for a while, The china daily even said that Terry Gou the president of Foxconn, told them “Foxconn is making preparations for iTV”. Now even if this is true, how great of a product will it be? Hartfordbusiness.com says “…could get Apple back to its history of radical innovation.” But today, most people know how to hook-up their TV to a computer and download tones of content; this combined with Hulu will keep most people satisfied. So as far as innovation goes, this doesn’t seem like the game changer that Apple needs.

The iPhone was a Game Changer and stayed at the top until recently, but only because it was a first-to-market product and had a great brand. The sharks at Samsung knew this and did not sit by idly while Apple had a brain freeze. Instead they started offering cheaper and better products, and they also tackled the branding issue by spending a cool 10 billion. In 2012 Samsung spent 4.3 billion on advertising, more than Apple, HP, Microsoft and Coca-Cola combined, as well as 5.4 billion on sales, promotion and marketing. Money well spent. (All while delivering new popular and timely apps missing on the iPhone.)

So now the story is, Apple needs to make money somewhere and keep the brand alive while they wait for a new idea. So by releasing lower end models they plan to recapture market share, hold interest in their OS and keep investors happy. We all know what happens if you are off in the woods picking blackberries instead of doing something innovative or profitable. So Apple probably won’t find another Steve Jobs like mind anytime soon, but this may keep them in the race for market share. Will Apple take command of their destiny, and Global Market Share, once again? Will Apple invent and be first to market with the next generation Consumer Electronics Game Changer? Or is it too late and history will note the impending low end release as an MBA spreadsheet contrived “A race to the bottom”.